Plants vs. Zombies

from PopCap, originally released 15th February, 2010

Get ready to soil your plants as a mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home. Use your arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants — peashooters, wall-nuts, cherry bombs and more — to mulchify 26 types of zombies before they break down your door. ...

Everyone who doesn’t already own Plants Vs. Zombies should head immediately to the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot, because both the iPhone and iPad versions are currently free. While you’re at it, you might as well grab Monsters, Inc. Run, Swing King, and Infinity Blade because they’re also free.

Being an iOS gamer has its perks, doesn’t it! And since this is the first time Plants Vs. Zombies has gone free, does this mean new info about the sequel, due in spring, is imminent?

Foliage, beware. PopCap’s salad-chomping zombies will be shambling back onto the tower defense scene with a Plants vs Zombies sequel sometime in Spring 2013. Ah, love is in the air–a love for grinding tender roots and leaves under merciless rows of yellowed teeth, that is.

Currently, details about the new Plants vs Zombies are as thin as a lettuce-fed zombie, but PopCap promises that we can expect ‘a bevy of new features, settings, and situations, designed to delight the franchise’s tens of millions of fans around the world.’

Some denizens from the Plants vs Zombies universe had a few things to say via a press release that was distributed by PopCap earlier today:

‘Spring is crullest curlie ungood time, and plantz grow dull roots. So, we are meating you for brainz at yore house. No worry to schedule schedlue plan’¦ we’re freee anytime. We’ll find you.’

(Mom? Is that you?)

Sonny F. Lower of the Flora Forever Foundation chimed in as well. ‘There was a time we relished a bracing, hearty blend of zombies, in the morning. But first, a brisk shower and some strategic pruning are required. Tomorrow is near!’

Will the promise of a new Plants vs Zombies game be enough to keep you warm and hopeful through the coming winter months?

We just received a very intriguing email from PopCap Games, makers of Plants vs Zombies, our only winner of both iPhone and iPad Game of the Month awards. This “save the date” email suggests to us a press event where we’ll hear about what’s next for the series, like a possible sequel.

A sequel or add-on certainly makes sense for PopCap, who has seen huge sales from Plants vs Zombies on the iPhone. This press event could also be to give an update of the game on Xbox Live, which was announced over a year ago.

With its extensive cast of characters and overwhelming critical and commercial success, we think Plants vs Zombies 2, or an add-on similar to Peggle Nights, would be great. We’re just hoping it comes to the iPhone and iPad a bit sooner than the eight-month wait we had to endure the first time around.

Plants vs Zombies eeked out a win this month by being the best tower defense variation we’ve played in a long time. You have to plant a garden filled with zombie-destroying flora, including rapid-fire peashooters and cabbage-flinging catapults. The variety of environments, weapons, and zombie attackers make this an extremely fun strategy adventure, and the crisp graphics and animation helped push it over the top.

This is the second time developer PopCap has been awarded our Game of the Month, and like with previous winner Peggle, we think Plants vs Zombies will be an ideal game to play on the big-screen iPad.

Our runner-up this month is a bit of a surprise. While we knew what to expect with Plants vs Zombies, it wasn’t until we started playing Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, with its hilarious dialogue and surprisingly addictive ship customization, that we fell for it. Space Miner is an iPhone-exclusive title that makes great use of the system’s pick-up-and-play accessibility.

Congratulations to our winners this month! Support these awesome iPhone developers by picking up these two games today.

Today’s health-conscious undead know that a diet heavy in brains can result in high cholesterol. Therefore, it’s better for them to eat their way through a salad bar’s worth of vegetables before indulging in brains. To promote healthy eating habits for zombies, PopCap has developed a game that makes learning nutrition fun: Plants vs. Zombies.

Ok, so it’s not actually educational, but the quirky premise of Plants vs Zombies remains entertaining throughout its 4-5 hour adventure. You must defend your front yard, backyard, and rooftop from the shambling Zombiepocalypse by planting Little Shop of Horrors specimens that will shoot, explode, or consume zombies.

Zombies will march directly up to your house in rows, and you have only a certain number of spaces in which to plant your defenses. You have access to plants that generate sunlight, Sunflowers, and by capturing this sunlight with a tap you can order more plants. Also, each plant has a countdown timer, keeping you from ordering too many at once.

Feed me, Seymour!

Some of the more common defensive plants are called Peashooters, which actually shoot peas, but there are also roadblock-style Wall-nuts, greenery-tossing Cabbage-pults, and exploding Cherry Bombs, along with over forty more.

At night, you have to rely more on mushrooms, some of which don’t need sunlight, and later on you’ll require plants that can light up or blow away fog, or aquatic plants to defend your backyard pool. Each plant has its own unique animation, and they’ll bob and sway as they prepare to defend your turf. You’ll also unlock a new type of plant nearly every round, which continually opens the game up to new strategies.

The zombies are equally varied. Early undead sport traffic cones on their head as a helmet, but you’ll also fight newspaper-wielding business zombies, padded football zombies, and zombies driving zambonis and bobsleds. The game always does a good job of letting you know when a big attack is coming, and it also gives you hints ahead of time to let you select the right plants.

Night of the living veggies.

What makes Plants vs Zombies an absolute gem is the loads of personality and unique animation for each plant and zombie. It’s also very well-suited for the iPhone, with your inventory in a convenient sidebar and a glowing marker that will light up the row and column you’re about to place your plants in. You can either drag or tap to plant your defenses, and this helps prevent mistakes in the midst of battle.

With a lengthy adventure mode, plus an unlockable quickplay mode, minigames, bonus items, and achievements, Plants vs Zombies offers an excellent value for the low price. We would like to see an endless survival mode or some form of online high scores, but the current package will entertain you for a long time.

Remarkably, Plants vs Zombies starts off great and gets even better as you play. By the time you’re done with adventure mode, you’ll have unlocked most of the game and still be happy to start over, with your plants unlocked and a chance to earn even more goodies. This is a very special game, full of personality, and both thoughtful strategy gamers and zombie hunters alike will love it.

One of the most highly anticipated iPhone games will be available sooner than you might think. We’ve just received word that PopCap’s port of the world’s first “flower defense” game will be arriving in just under a week. To be more specific: February 15, 2010.

If you’re not excited for Plants Vs Zombies, then you may want to check your pulse, because it was last year’s most endearing, personality-filled game, and now it’s headed for our favorite portable system.

PvZ features dozens of lovable, hilarious zombie varieties attempting to enter a house to eat the owner’s brains. Your only defense is horticulture! You must plant a huge variety of flora, each with special abilities, to fend off the zombie invasion.

Zombies are coming! Only this time, they’re not only trying to get into your house to eat your brains, they’re trying to get into Fieldrunners’ house and eat its market share.

Both Fieldrunners and GeoDefense had better watch their backs, because according to a post on the official PopCap Games Facebook account, a popular new contender will be entering the fray in the battle for iPhone Tower Defense supremacy in late January 2010.

Posted as a response to an earlier post about a sale beginning January 4th, PopCap finally let slip the release window for its latest attempt to utterly eliminate any amount of free time you once thought you had. We’ll have a review of Plants vs Zombies as soon as we can dig up a copy. Thanks to reader Casper B for the tip!

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